The new consumer cycle: from coolhunting to direct interaction

A mere swipe of your digit lies between your acceptance or your rejection, your notification or your purchase. Smartphones and social media have placed everything within our reach, but they have also raised our expectations.

There is talk of instant gratification being the key to success in retail and sales, although in reality the consumer doesn’t just want gratification. They want anything and everything – right now.

Even new stimuli, in which consumers lose interest so easily (precisely because they are already completely saturated).

Remember when receiving an online order in a month all the way from the United States seemed like a luxury? Nowadays Amazon's 2-day delivery time can seem excessive and deter many buyers.

With the lowering of production costs in Asian countries and technological expansion, many of the inconveniences of searching, buying and selling products have been solved. However, not everyone foresaw the problem that would appear: consumers ready to alter their tastes and demands at high speed.

Faster: Speeding up of consumption in the market

Wigs were in fashion for a whole century. Men wore suits every day for decades in the 20th century. Military jackets with leather sleeves were only fashionable for a few months.

For how long will you use the next garment or tech accessory you buy? Although it appears that we are consuming more and more, in fact products have a shorter life cycle and are quickly replaced by more up to date ones.

This is due to two causes: we are becoming better at identifying user trends and adapting what we the supply, and we’re also taking less time to manufacture and launch products.

The ecological awareness movement responds to this new reality: markets have accelerated to reach almost the speed of light. The phenomenon that’s under greatest scrutiny is fast fashion, which according to the Copenhagen Fashion Summit does not seem to be slowing down: it is expected to grow 60% by 2030.

Previously Zara launched four large annual collections, coinciding with the seasons of the year. Now the frequency of new product launches is weekly and Zara, like any brand and industry, knows that the consumer is looking for new stimuli by the day.

The big question is, has that pace been set by buyers or by businesses?

More than 400 items in H&M's new arrivals category

On the one hand, producing and supplying more is the only way to stand out in such a saturated and competitive market, especially in broad niches. On the other hand, constant changes in supply and usage of products also force the consumer to continuously adapt.

Take televisions for example.

The old tube model found its place in custom-made furniture with room for the TV to fit perfectly. The arrival of the thinner and larger plasma screens left those kinds of shelves behind. Now the user needed more open furniture, or low tables or sideboards. As these screens evolved into more lightweight models, the possibility of hanging them from the wall begun. Suddenly, TV furniture became surplus and we’re looking for wall, even ceiling, mounts.

Furthermore, the change in demand for one product has its impact on other related products or services, so companies need to be accordingly up-to-date on the whole market and not just their own industry. Online purchases have facilitated instant access to these demand changes, and by 2040 95% of purchases are expected to be made via e-commerce. Anything may become obsolete without any notice.

Changes in fashion trends have a faster turnaround than actual product life. Apart from the relevant debate on sustainability, it is logical that companies should adapt by replicating successful models and omitting detail.

A conventional cut will tend to affect the design and product development phases, by allowing prototyping and sample creation processes to be dispensed with. In addition, to reduce the risk of producing products that are unsuitable, design and manufacturing departments will be working more closely with digital marketing and sales departments.

Popular, trending models are being replicated at lightning speed in a world where digitization is tending to homogenize tastes and thence supply. On the other hand, we don’t know how long each fashion cycle will last (TVs, smartphones, cafés, holiday experiences...), as they can vary unpredictably over just a few years.

Some business models, such as Zara, invest in less volume of stock per product (in turn, new products are released more frequently). Others launch services or products in response to a temporary boom, such as Amazon-type marketplace sellers who specialize in a product for the duration of peak demand.

Yet others manage to adapt part of their catalog to that new demand, without putting all their eggs in one basket; for example, bookshops that include space for tasting and buying wine.

This means that companies must keep a margin for product or service customization, such that the company is able to restructure its strategy at any time, without either starting from scratch or falling behind where its customers and competition are concerned.

The same goes for software: businesses must operate with room for change, for additions and new approaches to the future, and not limit themselves to very specific functions without undertaking projections or evolution analysis.

This is an essential step in a scenario where e-commerce will have ever more weight. According to basic macroeconomic principles, if demand is higher than supply, prices will tend to rise. But in this fast-paced panorama, there will always be a competitor with more supply capacity than you, more digitized and present on more channels, and who will be able to set lower prices that are more attractive for your audience.

Being prepared with a catalog that’s easy to organize and adapt in a short time span, is the key to continuing to compete today.

Coolhunting and trend analysis in business

At the dawn of the early 2000s, when 'digitization' began to be taken seriously, the press began to comment on the arrival of the coolhunter or trend hunter in companies. Who was this person? Where in the structure of the business might they best fit: in marketing, in sales, in manufacturing...?

Perhaps, like every good hunter, their role was, and still is, to camouflage themselves behind all that business fabric.

Trend forecasting

Within any given company, keeping up with the times is becoming increasingly complicated. in some industries, such as fashion, the release cycle has been reduced to 8 weeks. Keeping alert to developments in any socio-cultural, industrial or technological field, is the key to successfully anticipating shopping trends and reacting quickly to demand.

With any luck, this may be a demand that you can be the first to identify... or even create.

Adapting production

The emergence of a new trend does not mean having to design and manufacture products or services from scratch. That would be impossible due to the pace of production, and would mean a large waste of resources and stock.

The wise thing to do is to rectify, and only those companies with a production cycle prepared to deal in an agile way with any change, will be able to adjust their supply to the demand in short turnaround times without delaying their launches and thereby gaining advantage over the competition.

The agility of centralized catalog management

As the production and consumption cycle speeds up, it’s important for companies to have agility in creating, editing and updating catalogs and product information across all channels, offline and online.

In this sense, the most valuable strategy for the future is going to be to analyze your product information. Its quality is directly related to market impact and sales, as digital consumers have more opinion and greater economic weight.